Personal Jesus

3 boys expelled for having a snowball fight!

This is yet another reason why this country is going to ruin.

When I was a lad there was a number of things I loved doing - playing and collecting conkers in the autumn. In the winter when we actually saw significant snowfall one of the best things was snow fighting - yeah we all heard the apocryphal stories about the kid who lost his eye when someone put a bit of broken bottle in the snowball, but we all knew this was an urban legend designed to scare schoolkids. Except, I can appreciate in this day and age that this is more likely than legend.

But excluding 3 boys for playing snowballs? Jesus H, I thought the council in Sunderland who cut down the chestnut trees because of the danger of sticks hitting people on the head during conker season was almost the most laughable bit of nonsense I'd heard in years, but now a County Durham headmaster takes the biscuit (for this week, anyhow) for banning these obviously evil and twisted little bastards who were probably trying to subvert national security with half a dozen compacted handfulls of snow.

One other rant before I go and make a vast difference to my life...

The 2012 Olympic bid. This time nothing to do with Red Ken's Jewish outburst, but more to do with a Tory statement that confirmed my deepest suspicions about the Conservative party's burning desire to get back into government at all costs...

In Stratford where the Olympic village is being cited there will be 280 businesses, plus about 300 homes that will have compulsary purchase orders slapped on them - this means they have NO recourse, no appeal, no nothing - they are given by the purchaser a compulsary amount of money - normally the going market rate plus a little bit extra to offset moving and other miscellaneous expenses. It sounds reasonably fair, especially if every piece of property in the UK, or especially London, was the same price. But Stratford is probably the cheapest place in London, by a Fleet Street mile, in fact it is so cheap that if you go across any of its borders into neighbouring boroughs you will find prices going up by astronomical amounts, some as high as £200K. The 280 businesses have collectively expressed both their desire to see the Olympic Games come to London and their dismay at being offered not enough money to relocate effectively, or if they did they would have to move so far away that most of their workforce would not being about to move or afford to move. The London Games committee (led by a staunch Tory, Seb Coe) have said they have done nothing wrong and the fair price had been offered. No one denies this, except that the 280 businesses and 300+ homeowners and tenants all live in the real world and not the fantasy world generated by computer for 2012.

What's this got to do with Michael Howard and his crones? Well, they've thrown their weight behind the businesses and are asking for a fairer deal, claiming, if they win the next general election, these people will get what they need to remain local. It was a Tory government that introduced Compulsary Purchase Orders in the first place and it has been subsequent Tory governments that have ignored the plight of small businesses, despite claiming to be the supporters of. It proves that they will all (and by 'they' I mean all politicians) say what you want them to say to give them the opportunity of getting into the Commons.